The various ascetic movements which prospered under the general ægis of the medieval church represent so many different types of religious idealism that no generalization about them will be accurate. Protestantism reacted violently from the monastic ideal and therefore has been able to see nothing in monasticism but a selfish flight from life’s realities. Monasticism may be a retreat from life, but at its best it was not a selfish retreat. Its development of the arts, its emphasis on learning, its vast philanthropies and its religious zeal for those outside of the monastic walls are not selfish characteristics. It did sometimes degenerate into a very odious type of spiritual selfishness and pride; but if we judge it by its typical exemplars, we cannot accuse it of a lack of social passion. The religious fervor of Catholic ascetics has been matched by Protestant mystics, but their ethical insights have never been excelled. Their superior moral shrewdness was revealed in their ability to detect the perils to the ethical ideal which are covert in the natural and, from any obvious perspective, virtuous social relationships. They saw that the family, in itself the most virtuous of human groups, could easily become the occasion for disloyalty to high fealties of the soul. “Whoso loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” Jesus had said, and no one in the history of the church seems to have understood the problem with which he dealt in those words as well as Catholic ascetics. It must be said that the celibacy of the monasteries was not prompted solely by the desire to avoid conflicting loyalties; it sprang partly from a morbid evaluation of the sexual relation. That was probably the weakest and least worthy characteristic of medieval asceticism. Its understanding of the perils to the spirit in the possessive instinct was perhaps its finest bit of insight. It understood how easily the privilege and power which spring from the possession of property may corrupt the soul with pride and destroy a loving relationship between individuals. It therefore insisted upon the vow of poverty. In all these problems the insight of asceticism was superior to its strategy. It saw peril in ordinary human relationships where most modern Christians are unable to detect them; but it knew of no way to overcome the peril except by destroying the relationships and building its unique fellowship of the spirit upon the basis of celibacy, poverty and absolute obedience. In asceticism the flowers of the spirit are cut from the roots by which they are supported and life is destroyed in the process of its purification. Asceticism creates a high type of ethical spirituality which cannot be universalized without completely destroying society; and the virtue which it develops can be maintained only in its own artificial media and therefore lacks redemptive force. The great medieval ascetics have always claimed